Re: Stories, Chaos and Laws

From: Nick_Brooke_at_deloitte.touche.co.uk
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 96 15:31:59 GMT



Fiction Corner

Two recent, very different, views of Glorantha:

"The Story of Sheng Seleris" -- Excellent! More, Martin, please!!

"The Gifts of the Lady" -- Excellent! More, Erik, please!!

'Nuff said. A quick reminder, though: there will be a storytelling contest at Glorantha-Con in Chicago next January. Any entries are welcome, on any Gloranthan themes, so please get busy writing and rehearsing. As long as you can tell the whole thing in ten minutes or less, the organisers won't mind whether you read it from paper, recite it from memory, perform or sing your piece (though you should try to impress the audience and judges).

Entries can be myths, folk-tales, chunks of saga, sayings or jokes: it's probably best to avoid war-stories drawn from gaming (unless you can do justice to your campaign's setting and characters in under ten minutes - think about it!). Please bring stories from your favourite part of the lozenge: variety is the spice of life!

The contest will be judged by Greg Stafford, with fame, beer, prizes, and the likelihood of publication for the winning entries. Go for it!



Steve Martin writes:

> Is anyone interested in seeing articles on The Night Sky in Prax, Praxian
> Seasons, or the Cult of Oakfed for comment?

I'm game. But would Oakfed have any meaningful "cult" -- surely shamanic spirit-cult worship is a more likely way of contacting the God of Wildfire?

> Finally, can anyone design a "Praxian" rune to use as the title for this
> volume?

How's about Beast?



David Dunham noted, re: screening or blocking malicious or unwanted posts:

> The Digest has been remarkably spam-free, so I wouldn't worry about it.

It certainly has! I'm astonished at the quality and consistency of this mailing list; I've received far more unsolicited and unwanted junk email as an individual than I have done through the Digest. Also, the speed of turnaround we get by having an un-moderated list is extremely welcome. The good news is that there has been only one malicious/anonymous post worthy of comment in the many years I've been reading this forum.

IMHO, the format of this list is one of its greatest strengths. By being Digested, we miss the "scattergun" effect that can come from "reflecting" lists: people have the time and opportunity to consider their posts before sending them off, which cuts a lot of chaff from the bandwidth. I can't think offhand of any great improvements to the Digest's format.

Now, looking forwards: we have a *lot* of material in the Digest archives, and some transitional moments ahead (when the Digest moves into Chaosium's orbit, frex). Is this a good time to think about ways of making the archive (and its previous incarnations with Andrew Bell, Henk Langeveld and Loren Miller's versions) more readily available? On CD-ROM with some kind of search routines attached, perhaps? Linking articles with HTML jumps?? Indexing key words and themes???

I don't know how these things can be done, but given the number of computer types and number-crunchers in the hobby, I'm sure someone out there does. Food for thought, anyone?



Tim Byrd writes:

> One thing I have been thinking about for a while is how chaos-centric
> Glorantha seems to have become over the years.

I'd say almost the reverse. It is, obviously, easier to write adventures and settings with primitive social contexts than to produce sophisticated, civilised, complex material for gaming. When RuneQuest started up, games were played out on "the frontier" (Prax or Balazar); players were seldom "at home"; the most detailed cultures were the oh-so-sophisticated Prax Nomads, Balazarings, Trolls and Creatures of Chaos (Broo & Scorpion Men).

It's also easier to write adventures with Evil Bad Guys than deal with tricky ethical questions ("Is murdering Teelo Norri priestesses a Good Thing?"). "The only good Lunar is a dead Lunar" may be arguable; "the only good Chaos is dead Chaos" is less so.

Besides, Evil Bad Guy adventures are cross-denominational: anyone can play! More socially-aware adventures usually need appropriate protagonists: I've played "Gaumata's Vision" (Mike Dawson's excellent scenario from "Shadows on the Borderlands") with a file of Sun Dome militia for player characters, and we had literally hours of fun exploring and defining the ramifications of Yelmic social hierarchies, attitudes and prejudices on the conduct of their investigation. (Frex: asking women for information is morally wrong; a "wise woman" is a contradiction in terms; sneaking around to search for clues is suspect).

The weakness of the old approach is that you don't know much about where your player characters are coming from. We had more information about the social organisation of the more "civilised" Chaos cults (Thanatar, Vivamort, Krarsht) than about the cultures and civilisations within which - -- or in opposition to which -- they existed.

With "What the Priest Says", "What My Father Told Me", "Sun County", "King of Sartar", "River of Cradles", and the Risklands section of "Dorastor", I believe RuneQuest has moved a long way *away* from being Chaos-centric. Many, many more scenario ideas arise from looking at the ideas, values and conflicts of characters and cultures, than from simply going Troll-bashing or Chaos-killing. The publication of "Genertela" gave us the outline of some previously unheard-of complex human societies (Safelster; Kralorela; Teshnos), and recent work in e.g. "How the West was One" and "The Glorious ReAscent" has fleshed out some hyper-civilised views of the lozenge: the Malkioni and Yelmic worldviews, neither of which is particularly chaos- centric (unlike the Orlanthi, Praxian and Trollish obsession with the stuff). Malkioni are mostly concerned with Law and Sin, and Yelmic types with Order and Obedience; both regard Chaos as one manifestation of the alternative (the Devil's Work; the absence of Divine Order).

To some extent, "Dorastor: Land of Doom" represented a turning-back of the clock: a land of Chaos-bashes, filled with icky monsters to beat up. But I don't think this is typical of recent publications: besides, the book in question makes it quite clear that this is a mug's game. (You *can't* hope to clean up Dorastor. The best you can wish for is to survive there).

Also, in part we're hostage to the fact that the best ever account of the mythology and history of Glorantha (in "Cults of Terror") was written from an outspokenly chaos-centric viewpoint ("First Age: Nysalor was Chaotic. Second Age: not much Chaos, really. Third Age: Lunars look Chaotic to me").

But I do think Tim is looking down the wrong end of the telescope. As Glorantha has become more culturally aware, the need for simplistic "Beat up the Bad Guys" scenarios - read, Chaos bashes - has become less and less. Players can take characters from sophisticated backgrounds and play them in relevant adventures. As they explore distant corners of the lozenge, we can not only flesh out the strange peoples they'll meet (e.g. the Vadeli), but *also* understand the characters themselves (and their societies) better by playing through their reaction to "strangeness".

Besides, whoever said the Vadeli were Chaotic? :-)

> ... More supplements are dedicated to Chaos than to Compromise.

Can you send me details of these extra Chaos-devoted supplements (I only counted Dorastor, Lords of Terror and Drastic Resolutions in the last few years: must be missing out on some wellspring of Gloranthan publications!)

___
Pam writes:

> Well, as background for my Dara Happan campaign, I did a bit of digging
> around on "Assyria Online", among other places, and came across a copy
> of the Law Codes of Hammurabi.

There *is* stuff worth having on the Internet! Actually, ancient lawcodes are brilliant sources for social chrome and scenario-drivers. I find far more inspiration for writing Glorantha in ancient and dark-age texts than in cookie-cutter Fantasy Trilogies (TM), which I've largely given up on.



Peter Metcalfe divides Lunar courts up into "Commoner", "Military" and "Imperial", and I tend to agree, though with nuances.

Local laws are still valid in the Empire, so that in Dara Happa cases are judged by the ancient Dara Happan laws, in the West Reaches by Carmanian Black and White Laws, in Pelanda by civic assemblies of jurors, etc. The Empire is truly inclusive and cosmopolitan, and although in the long run the superior truths of the Lunar Way will erode away these lesser local forms, for the present the member-peoples of the Empire are free to employ their own systems of justice.

Imperial law, however, can be applied whenever a Citizen appeals to the Emperor for justice, or in cases where a crime or complaint makes a matter of more than local interest. Imperial courts are not, then, simply the venues for show-trials that Peter describes -- they're also where most capital cases, tax frauds and the like will end up being tried.

And military courts take precedence wherever martial law is in force -- in military administrative districts (like much of non-urban Dragon Pass and Prax), in the army, and in times of rebellion and crisis for starters.

We have a cameo scenario of MOB's slated for inclusion in Tales #16 which turns on an obscure point of Carmanian law; Martin Crim's initiative in recommending such drivers is commendable. The *great* thing about "lawyer" scenarios is that the players can be shafted however they approach the situation: either they can hire an expensive lawyer of their own to explain the "trap" and avoid the adventure (but lose out financially), or else they can walk straight in and "enjoy" whatever the kindly referee has in store for them...



Speaking of Martin:

> I was thinking about posting a parody piece to the Digest to which I
> didn't wish to attach my name, but now it'll never see the light of day.

Oh please send it in: we could do with a few laughs!



Nick

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